


I Said to the Sun

by publicbenches



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dubious Science, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Slow Burn, Space Pirates, Treasure Planet AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:49:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11926056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/publicbenches/pseuds/publicbenches
Summary: Is it really Lance's fault that he expected the culmination of being given a legendary treasure map and setting sail on a famous space ship to be a bit... flashier? Not that he doesn't justloveplaying slave to the head-navigator-slash-communications-specialist (who, quite frankly, could do with a lesson or twenty in social graces), but isn't a treasure hunt supposed to be fun?––also known as the treasure planet au that i've been stewing over for a year now





	1. Team Bonding is a Multi-Universal Constant

**Author's Note:**

> hello!  
> so this is probably in no way original, and its definitely not a fandom i'm used to writing for, but i've been losing muse for a while so i decided to try something new!  
> please accept my offering of plance
> 
> alt title: i feel like i accidentally made the reunion between coran and allura weirdly romantic and, while i admit the hilarity of that considering who they represent from the movie is not lost on me, i'm gravely, gravely sorry about it

Lance doesn't know why it smells like salt, because despite the seemingly endless lines of docked ships there isn't a single drop of ocean in sight. But the sea breeze is there–maybe it's ambiance, conducted by the synthetic atmosphere of the space station–and the vessels looming before him have a certain elegance about them that makes him think they might be better fit for the oceans back home. 

There's adrenaline buzzing in his fingertips as they run over the map in his pocket, cold and brass but alight with some kind of old energy that he can't quite explain. There's no battery, as far as he can tell—nothing to explain the humming sound the sphere gives off if ever he catches himself in a silence still enough to allow it. 

Not that he's much of a scientist anyways. He's not much of anything, really, just a kid from a planet in a dying star system with the incredible fortune to be in the right place at the right time. That’s why he's here in the first place, tailing after his mom’s colleague in search of people who are actually  _ qualified  _ to handle an archaeological find of this magnitude. Or whatever you call a legendary map to the biggest treasure trove in the known universe. 

“Keep your eyes peeled, my boy!” Coran’s enthusiasm cuts through Lance’s awed daze, shocking him back to the present. It might be his first time visiting a station this large, but he shouldn't gawk like some nobody-tourist. “We’re looking for the  _ Altean _ , remember. It should be around here somewhere…”

Lance groans. “Coran, we've literally been circling these docks for  _ hours _ . I've seen that ship like, eighty times by now!” He points at a hideous forest green vessel branded the  _ S.S. Iverson _ with a build more akin to a military tank than a space ship. “Are you sure we’re even at the right pier?”

Coran assures him they're in the right place with absolute conviction, sniffing with a little indignation as he does. Lance backs off reluctantly. Sure, he might not be some nobody-tourist, but he's not exactly some wealthy merchant or explorer either. He doesn't know his way around a space station like Coran (supposedly) does. Besides, he's better off sticking on Coran’s good side. It's only because of him that this trip’s even possible—Lance’s mom would've sooner grounded him for accidentally letting pirates destroy their house than send him off on some expensive, life-threatening adventure to who-knows-what corner of the universe on a potentially futile search for a treasure no one’s even sure exists. 

All in all, it’s shaping up to be a promising voyage.

Coran runs ahead, turning another corner and scratching at his mustache, then straightens up like he’s been shocked. He props his hands on his hips and grins at Lance and, with a proud sweep of his arm, announces, “There she is! The famous  _ Altean. _ Quite a sight, isn’t she?”

“ _ Finally, _ ” Lance groans, coming up around the edge of the building and, before he can follow up with an unimpressed quip about how a  _ ship is a ship is a ship, _ he stops short, jaw dropping and neck craning to take in the massive space ship in front of him.

The sleek, dark wood of the hull and keel reflects the early morning sunlight so sharply it’s practically blinding, broken only by windows for the canons that peer out from the gunport. The rails are made from polished, lighter wood, and are carved into intricate spirals and patterns. The sails are tied at the moment, but the flag at the top is undoubtedly the crest of Altea, a planet long-since swallowed by its dying star in a solar system light years away from Lance’s own. The forepeak of the ship made in that planet’s honor is mounted with the stone statue of a beautiful maiden, allegedly the last proper Altean queen before the people abandoned their home for good. 

“It sure does bring back memories,” Coran muses beside him. Lance had almost forgotten he was there. “You know I used to work on this ship, back before I got my own little star-cruiser and decided to settle down on your planet. I have to say I rather miss the old days; there’s nothing quite like braving the wide open void with a crew of your most trusted mates right along beside you.” He starts towards the ship, leaving Lance to catch up a couple seconds later.

“Why’d you leave it?” Lance asks breathlessly, trying to take in as much of the elegant sight that he can. Coran really wasn’t kidding when he said the  _ Altean _ was a big deal. 

Coran shrugs, an almost forced gesture that paints a better picture of his wistfulness than his words ever could. “Had to move on, I suppose. These old knees weren’t made for running up and down the masts all day, you know. Besides,” he adds, lighter, “I like your planet. It’s much easier teaching history when you’ve got an actual classroom!” He laughs, and Lance offers a smile.

They’re turning the front corner of the hull when the gangplank slams down in front of them, startling Lance clear out of his skin. He yelps and jumps back. Coran, on the other hand, just smiles pleasantly and folds his hands behind his back, waiting patiently as the thundering footsteps from up above manifest into an actual living being.

“Coran!” 

To Lance’s immense surprise, a stunning young woman throws herself at Coran before she’s even fully made it down the length of the gangplank. Her arms wrap around his neck so tight Lance is momentarily worried she might choke him, but Coran’s hands come to rest gently at the small of her back, and after that the only impression Lance gets is that he’s intruding on something private.

“Captain Allura,” Coran says, pressing his chin into her shoulder. “It’s been quite too long.”

Lance has to clench his jaw to stop it from dropping, because that would be rude. This beautiful woman, with her flowing silver hair and just–just un-captain-like appearance is the owner of this ship? Now that Lance takes another look, she does have the Altean markings, and those pointy ears, and the fabulous hair that Coran assures him is absolutely a defining trait of the Altean people. And of course, he has no problem with a woman being the captain. He was just so sure, from the way that Coran described his culture, that they wouldn’t be the type to leave women in positions of power.

Then again, Altea is gone, and other planets can be remarkably influential in terms of progressivism.

Captain Allura unhooks herself from Coran and looks Lance up and down. “This is the young man you said found the map?” She asks. 

Coran nods. “That’s him! The same boy whose mother let me stay with them when I first landed on Montressor. You know, I have to say Captain, the people there are just as welcoming as you insisted!”

Allura smiles at him. “I’m glad to hear it, Coran.” Then she turns to Lance. “My name is Captain Allura. I’m sure Coran’s told you all about my ship, and what we stand for. And you are?”

Lance grins. He can’t resist turning on the charm–it’s just part of the routine when it comes to dealing with pretty ladies, kickass space ship captain or not. “The name’s Lance,” he says, his words practically dripping with honey-coated flirtation, “but you can call me your future first mate.”

Allura’s face twists into something grotesquely like disgust. “Charming,” she says dryly. Then immediately, as if the exchange had never happened, her pretty face resets itself and she leads the way up the gangplank, gesturing for them to follow, and continues her introduction.

“I’m sure you fully understand the terms of agreement, for this voyage.” She says as she steps up onto the main deck, weaving her way fluidly through the bustling crew members. Lance struggles to keep up as the sea of bodies that parts for her swirls back into place in her wake, offering him no consideration. Coran seems content to get lost in the crowd, more or less disappearing for good as he hangs back to catch up with familiar faces. 

“Sure,” Lance says, slipping between a drone and a large, crustacean-esque humanoid to catch up with her. “I take care of the map, you take care of the ship, and at the end of it all you get your funding for your school or whatever, while I grab the glory and the gold!”

“For the most part, yes,” Allura sighs, leading him up to the less crowded quarterdeck. “Though I must inform you now, this isn’t going to be a pleasure cruise, Lance. You will be required to pull your own share of weight around here. I trust you know your way around a ship?”

Lance shrugs. “I’ve flown a solar surfer or two.”

Allura makes a sound like she’s suppressing a sigh and shakes her head. “Very well. I’m putting you in the care of someone who knows enough that it should rub off on you.”

“Oh?” Lance says, catching up to her and suavely falling into step beside her. “So I won’t be spending all of my time basking in your company?”

Allura clasps her hands together with a dazzling smile and comes to a stop at the base of the mizzenmast, where a young man sits tinkering with the lifelines secured in a metal ring around the mast’s circumference. “Thankfully, no. Pidge,” she adds, calling the attention of the kid sitting at her feet. He looks up then and pushes up his glasses, blinking in confusion at the sight of the two of them. 

He’s nothing impressive, is Lance’s immediate thought. He’s a scrawny little pale kid with a rough haircut and geeky glasses. There’s no muscle that Lance can see, no immediate sign that this guy’s anything special. He’s human for sure, but not the Montressor breed. As far as boys go, he’s definitely on the prettier side, even if his overall presentation could use some work. Not that Lance would ever say that out loud.

“This is Lance,” Allura continues, stepping aside to let Pidge size him up. “He’s the person funding this voyage. I’ve decided to leave him in your care for the duration of the journey.”

“I’m sorry,  _ what _ ?” the boy says, at the same time Lance shouts “ _ Are you kidding!? _ ” with all the indignation he can muster. 

“I figured you could show him the ropes, since he’s a novice when it comes to sailing ships like this, and I trust your abilities. Besides,” she adds, pretending that the growing looks of horror on both of their faces aren’t there. “You’re our head navigator and communications specialist. Surely you’re the most fit for the job of dealing with our passenger and his map?”

Pidge frowns and opens his mouth to say something, but before he can Lance cuts in.

“Captain Allura, I didn’t sign up for this to be handed off as some ten year old kid’s personal assistant.”

The boy’s irritated retort of “I’m fifteen!” goes unnoticed as Lance implores the captain. 

“If you think I’m spending this whole trip changing diapers, the deal’s off.”

Allura waves a hand over her shoulder as she turns away. “It’s all the same to me. Your forfeit leaves us with the map anyways, according to our contract, and I’m sure we could find out  _ some _ way to open it without your help eventually.”

Lance scowls helplessly as she walks off towards the stairs down to the main deck. When she finally disappears, he turns his frown on the navigator-boy behind him, who’s already gone back to what he was doing. 

“Hey, don’t just ignore me!” Lance says. The kid–Pidge–looks up at him with an unimpressed expression. Lance crosses his arms. “What, you’re too good for me now?”

Pidge sighs. “Frankly, yes,” he says. “I really don’t have time to deal with some newbie right now.” He turns back to what he’s doing and pulls a knot tight. Lance notices that his fingers are covered in small cuts and calluses, the sort that match the kind Lance builds up in solar surfing season back on Montressor. “I’m not some rookie-trainer. I’ve got stuff to do.”

He’s apparently finished with whatever he was doing though, because he stands up and starts walking towards the stairs that the Captain disappeared down. Unsure what else to do, Lance follows quickly, his irritation building. 

“Hey, I’m not that new,” Lance insists, forcing his way through the thickening crowd after Pidge. “I’ve been surfing for years, I know my knots. Plus my mom runs an inn back on Montressor, and I’m in charge of ship valet and upkeep.” Granted, they don’t get many ships of this caliber back in their tiny nook in the town (or any, really), but Lance doesn’t like being treated like an idiot. 

“Here, that kind of experience earns you menial labor at best,” Pidge says, making his way towards the bow of the ship where another set of stairs leads down into the lower decks. Lance can’t help but let his eyes wander, trying to take in as much as he can of this ship even as he tries to stay bitter. “You’re here because you can open a map. Don’t get too ahead of yourself buddy.”

Lance snorts and follows him around a turn in the hallway. “Yeah, and you can, what, talk to people? Somehow I don’t get the impression that you’re the right man for the job.”

Pidge ignores that comment in favor of pounding on a heavy iron door. “Hunk, open up!” he shouts. Lance thinks he might be gritting his teeth. He decides to count it as a win. 

The door clicks but doesn’t open, and Pidge pushes his way inside, not bothering to hold it open for Lance, who scoffs and pushes on the door with more force than necessary.

The room turns out to be something like an engine room, or at least a dumbed down version of what Lance had expected the engine room of a ship this massive to have. In reality, it’s practically a storage closet in comparison, with one bulky machine hooked up to pipes and cables as thick as snakes taking up most of the maneuverable space.

There’s a heavier guy kneeled in front of the machine within arm’s reach of the door with his head buried in a mess of wires and sparking electrical odds and ends. He doesn’t bother to back out of what he’s doing when Pidge announces their entry. Lance is starting to recognize a pattern with the crew of this ship.

“Wha–hey!” Lance yelps when Pidge suddenly pushes him further into the room. Pidge steps back with his hand on the doorknob, halfway out of the room already.

“Hunk, I’m gonna go calibrate the starboard defense system. I need you to babysit this kid while I’m gone.” And just like that, the door closes, and Mr. Communication Expert is gone with the wind. 

Lance sputters at the heavy iron door. “Are you–is he  _ serious? _ Who does that guy think he is, calling me some kid?  _ I’m older than you! _ ” He adds, shouting it loud enough that he’s sure Pidge heard it down the hall.

For a second, Lance almost forgets he’s not alone. Then, the guy working on the machine sighs and backs out, pushing his dark hair out of his eyes and adjusting the (frankly stylish) headband that’s supposed to be holding it back. “Whew,” he breathes, wiping sweat and grease from his forehead. Lance takes that moment to appreciate that it  _ is _ pretty hot in here. 

The guy turns to Lance with an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that. He can be kinda difficult sometimes.” He pulls a cloth out of his pocket and uses it to wipe his hand clean, then offers it (the hand) to Lance. “I’m Hunk, head engineer and chef of the  _ Altean. _ ” He says, his words tinted with a little bit of pride. Lance can see why. He has absolutely zero idea how to even approach the machine Hunk’s turning inside out. Mastering both engineering and the culinary arts? That’s something to brag about. 

It’s also a plus that the guy’s way more approachable than Pidge. Lance grins and shakes his hand. “Lance,” he says. “Master skysurfer and owner of the one and only Flint Map.” Yeah… the pride there definitely sounds more like bragging. He’ll have to work on that.

Hunk’s eyes widen nonetheless. “No. Freaking. Way. Are you serious? Do you  _ actually _ have the map?”

Lance grins and pulls it out of his jacket pocket. Repairs apparently forgotten, Hunk scrambles to his feet and reaches towards the bronze sphere without actually touching it. He makes an indecipherable wheezing sound and digs his fingers into his bottom lip. He gasps dramatically for air.

“ _ It’s the real thing. _ Holy crow, I can’t believe it. The real treasure map of pirate Captain Nathaniel Flint! The key to his treasure planet that nobody’s ever been able to prove the existence of–this might just be the most significant historical finding i-i-in-in centuries!” He laughs and takes a step back, pressing a hand to his forehead in disbelief. “How’d you find it?”

Lance grins and sweeps his arms, still holding the map in one hand. “That’s the beauty of it, man. I didn’t find the map–it found me.” He pauses for dramatic effect. As far as he can tell, Hunk doesn’t notice. “Just one day, out of the blue, BAM! Pirates, everywhere, all over my mom’s inn. There was some old guy on my roof who like, died in my arms when he handed it to me? But then he freakin’ evaporated or whatever so I don’t know if he was like a hallucination or what. Anyways, then the pirates showed up and man, did they want this thing bad. But the dead guy willed it to me, you know? So I couldn’t just let him down. The pirates decided to be jerks about it and burn down my house, so my mom and I packed up the fam and hurried on over to Coran’s. He’s chill. He’s letting us stay there while my mom tries to scrape the inn back together.” He hesitates for a moment, guilt inching up his throat as he thinks about his mom back on Montressor, hard at work with no one around to help her. He shakes the thought from his head.  _ That’s why you’re here, idiot. You’ve gotta hurry up and find that treasure if you want things to change. _

He pointedly leaves out the part where the dying man tells him to avoid the cyborg. Somehow, he feels like the likelihood of him encountering the cyborg old Billy Bones was talking about as opposed to running into any of the dozens of cyborgs employed in the space shipping business is too cosmically unlikely to warrant any actual concern.

“Wow dude,” Hunk says. “That’s so cool. I mean, not the stuff about pirates destroying your house. That sucks. But the rest of it is pretty neat.” He shoots a mournful glance over at his unfinished work. “The only kind of adventure I see these days is the mathematically precise journey of an electrical charge from a generator through an external electrical circuit.”

Lance hums sympathetically. “Still, you’ve gotta be some kind of genius if you know how to work all this stuff. Speaking of which, what even is this thing? It doesn’t look nearly big enough to be the engine for a ship this big.” He taps the machine with his toe. 

“That’s because it’s not,” Hunk says matter of factly, dutifully returning to his work. “It’s actually–an Altean solar energy converter.” His voice breaks with effort as he wrestles with some unseen screw or bolt. “Back when Altea was still, you know, a planet that existed, they were really big on loving the environment and preserving ecosystems and all that. Apparently, they were some of the first ships to fully convert to solar sails, and had a battery life of up to three weeks!” Is that an impressive amount of time? Lance isn’t well-versed enough in ships to know. 

Hunk backs out of the machine again and sighs. “Of course, now most ships run on quintessence, ‘cause that’s the  _ most _ efficient energy source by far. Though I can’t really say much for its environmental friendliness. Would you pass me that wrench?” Lance obliges, and Hunk’s voice takes on a muffled, tinny note again as he ducks back into the machine. “I’m pretty sure that stuff gives off radiation, or something. Have you heard about the Galran-employee-complaint scandal?”

“Uhh…” Lance had to duck out of the way as Hunk threw the wrench over his shoulder.

“Right, well basically a bunch of employees of some quintessence refinery were filing complaints about health violations on sight, going on about rashes and an increase of work related accidents that the companies weren’t doing anything about. Apparently it turned into this big conspiracy where the government was knowingly putting its people in there with little regard for their personal safety. A lot of people don’t believe it, but I don’t know. You know how the Galra are. ‘Vrepit Sa’ and all that. Those guys would do anything for their emperor.”

“Yeah, sure,” Lance agrees, not really having followed most of what Hunk said. Hunk seems to realize this as he sits back on his heels, dusts off his hands and quickly apologizes.

“Sorry. Rambling, I know. Basically, this thing converts solar power gathered by the sails into energy that the generator can use.”

“Ah,” Lance says, understanding. “That’s cool. You’re pretty smart, man!” He claps Hunk on the shoulder and they exchange a grin. Yeah, this guy’s definitely easier to get along with than Pidge. Too bad he couldn’t get dumped on him instead.

Hunk finishes up with the solar converter soon after that, and suggests they head down to the crew’s quarters so Lance can claim a spot not too far from him before all the good ones are taken. “You can just hang out with me I guess,” he says, “since Pidge isn’t big on people. He’s not really a bad guy, he’s just like that, you know?”

Lance snorts. “Sure, I guess. Doesn’t mean he has to act like a jerk about it though. I mean seriously, why’d Allura have to pair me with him? Heck, why’d she have to pair me up with anyone?”

Hunk sighs. “I’m sorry man. Allura’s really about team-building, and you’re technically a part of her team now. Pidge has a busy schedule and he’s… sort of a loner too. She doesn’t like that. My guess is that it’s more about getting him to be more social than getting you to be ship-smart.”

Lance groans. “Seriously? I’m stuck working for some five year old because the Captain likes  _ team bonding? _ That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Hunk just shrugs. “Hey, if it works, I don’t knock it. The guys on the  _ Altean _ are probably the closest group of people I’ve ever met. It’s like a family on here, and not just anybody’s allowed in.”

Lance supposes that has something to do with the ship’s historical significance and background, but he doesn’t comment. This is fine. It’s not like Allura’s going to be breathing down his neck forcing him to spend his every waking moment with Pidge. Hunk seems chill enough. It’ll be like working at the inn: handle the rude people during working hours, then talk shit about them as soon as he’s off the clock. 

Lance sighs in defeat. “It’s alright, I can deal,” he laments dramatically. “This isn’t the worst the McClains have tolerated. I’ll just let him know who he’s talking to, and we’ll be set from there.”

Hunk groans and shakes his head, letting Lance know that that’s an  _ exceptionally bad idea. _ But Lance is already moving past it, eagerly going on to ask Hunk about the barracks while he tries to push any thought of Pidge from his mind. 

This trip is going to be his childhood dream come true. He’s not about to have it ruined by some five-foot-two gremlin child with a stick up his ass.


	2. As Soon As You Think You've Made Progress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *updates three years later* sup doods
> 
> inspiration's been hard to come by these last several months. i guess thats when i turn to this fic haha. well hey, i always finish what i start. you all can count on that. i can't promise regular updates, but i can promise they will happen. your feedback fuels me friends. please enjoy! <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alt title: a star throws a bitch fit

It turns out, Pidge is just as thrilled with the current arrangements as Lance is. As if that hadn't been clear from the first moment they laid eyes on each other. 

He seems to be doing his absolute best to pretend Lance doesn't exist, which Lance wouldn't really mind at all if the Captain didn't keep shooting him what she must have thought were subtle glances. Lance grits his teeth and pretends to be looking around, mentally berating himself for not reading his contract more carefully. Apparently, selling himself into slavery was part of the glorious adventure that came with finding a long lost treasure trove, and he had no way to back out now. 

At least Pidge doesn't treat him like an idiot. The guy has enough common decency about him to understand being some weird five year old tech genius doesn't make him better than anyone, Lance comes to find out. Unfortunately, giving Lance credit for not being academically lacking, as standard on Montresor goes, doesn't make Pidge any friendlier toward him. He spends almost all of his time alone, cooped up below deck fiddling with whatever gadget or radio needs his absolute, undivided attention. More often than not, he’s stuffed himself up between the hydraulic beams or on the far edge of one of the ship’s masts where nobody else can reach him, doing god-knows-what. 

“What does he do all the time that's so important he can't even be bothered for a second?” Lance asks Hunk one day, scowling up at Pidge in the crow’s nest. 

Hunk shrugs. “Star charts? I dunno man, it's probably just some normal navigator stuff. Pidge might be kind of neurotic but he's on the crew for a reason.”

Lance snickers. “What, he stowaway or something?”

“It’s ‘cause Captain Allura recognizes he's good at what he does. One of the best I've ever worked with, probably,” Hunk adds. “If you don't antagonize him, he won't bother you.”

Lance scoffs. “Fat chance of that! You know what he said when we first met? That he was too good for me! How pretentious do you have to  _ be?!” _

Hunk nudges him and kicks the bucket of suds, alerting him to Allura’s appearance. Lance grudgingly plunges the mop into the water and slaps it onto the deck, muttering to himself as he pretends to be productive. 

“Okay so  _ maybe  _ he's not very good with people. But fighting him every step of the way won't get you anywhere. To be honest, you're gonna have a miserable trip if you two don't figure out how to get along.”

Lance groans, smacking a hand over his eyes. “Geez, I  _ know  _ already! Who's side are you even on, man? I'm just trying to vent.”

Hunk shrugs. “Sorry dude. I mean, I don't disagree with you. The guy could really use an attitude adjustment, but  _ someone’s _ gotta play devil’s advocate.” He glances up at Pidge, who doesn't notice them staring his way. “To be honest, I kinda just wanna avoid conflict if I can.”

Lance huffs. “Oh yeah? Well I don't. Hold this.” He pushes the mop into Hunk’s hands and puffs up his chest, making straight for the main mast and the ladder leading up to the crow’s while Hunk sputters hushed, half-formed protests behind him. 

Lance pulls himself up the rope ladder, wobbling precariously but pushing on with sheer force of will and anger. As he climbs higher he forgets what exactly it was that he was angry about, but decides a general argument about being a team and trusting each other wouldn't hurt. 

He hoists himself up into the crow’s nest and pauses for a second to catch his breath. The synthetic atmosphere projected by the ship thins this far from the generator, making it harder to breathe. Once he’s composed himself, he squares his shoulders and props his hands on his hips, turning his attention to Pidge, slumped over a sprawling map with some weird headphones on and his back turned to Lance. 

He looks deep in thought, extremely focused on whatever it is that he's jotting down at random intervals as information filters in through his headset. It's a curious thing to watch, seeing Pidge so in his element and so oblivious to the fact that he's being watched. It's hypnotizing, in a way, but it's not at all what Lance came for and like hell is he going to back down now. 

So he pushes Pidge’s headphones down around his neck and stands back to enjoy the startled reaction this elicits. 

“What the—? Lance!” Pidge is immediately on the defensive, clumsily gathering the map to his chest and jumping to his feet, knocking the headphones back to clatter against the rickety deck of the crow’s. They're attached to a weird, boxy jumble of metal with so many dials and knobs that Lance doesn't even know where to begin making sense of it. He decides to start with Pidge. 

“I've been down there mopping decks for  _ two weeks _ now. I'm starting to get the feeling that that's all I'm gonna be doing around here!”

It's obvious how hard Pidge is trying not to roll his eyes. It doesn't work, but the effort is definitely there. He grumbles and kneels down, folding up his map and checking on his weird machine. “Would you relax already? We've got months ahead of us, plenty of time for you to upgrade to polishing the hull.”

Lance doesn't appreciate what he hopes is Pidge's humor. “Listen,” he interjects, slamming a palm flat over Pidge’s map where it's perched on his makeshift crate-seat (lazy asshole doesn't even do his share of actual lookout up here, big surprise). Pidge looks up sharply, first at Lance’s hand and then at his face, his eyes narrowing dangerously behind glass frames. “I'm the one with the map, alright? I'm the one who found it, and I'm the one who opens it. If you're the navigator of this thing, we’re  _ supposed  _ to be figuring this out  _ together. _ The hell kind of good does hiding out alone up here or wherever even do? How the hell do we even know where we're going right now?”

Pidge tugs the map out from under Lance’s hand pointedly, and takes a deliberate pause to pack it back into his satchel and tug the strap over his shoulder. “I know how to do my job,” he snaps, moving to push past Lance to the ladder. Lance blocks him in, not letting him pass. Pidge’s frown deepens. “Move, Lance.”

“Not until you give up on your whole ‘lone wolf’ thing. It's super annoying.”

Pidge scoffs. The glare of a nearby star catches light behind his amber eyes, and for a moment it almost looks like there's a fire burning within them, the kind that’s come close to dying but been stubbornly revived time and again, and for that instant Lance wonders about everything that unwavering light has seen. Then the sails shift, and the light’s blocked, and the moment passes, and all at once Lance is back to staring down Pidge Gunderson, professional pain in the ass, expert-level hemorrhoid extraordinaire and the very person Lance needs to appeal to in order to get his ass out of mop duty. All of it leaves a sour taste in his mouth. 

“I don't know how they do things on midget-planet,” Lance goes on, if only so the sting of his words will acid-wash the sticky feeling from his tongue. “But on Montresor, when you're put in a team, you work as a team, like it or not. I've got the map, you  _ apparently  _ know how to read it, so there’s nothing stopping us on this whole big ship from actually  _ doing something  _ about it except for your dumb isolationist attitude.”

The glare Pidge has fixed on him is frustrated at best, murderous at worse. Lance assures himself it falls more in the middle of the two extremes. For once, Pidge doesn't have a smart response for him, and it takes him a second to gather up enough of the fragile shards of his pride to sigh and say, “We’re on course with the homing signal released the first day of the trip, when you opened it in the Captain’s quarters,” he explains, turning his gaze slightly away. He pushes some of his frazzled hair out of his eyes absently. “We won't need to reopen the map for another few days; honestly, it's probably for the best we keep it closed as much as possible. If it takes signals coming in, Polaris knows it sends its own radio footprint out.” 

He doesn't add anything about Lance’s preaching about teamwork, instead mumbling something about having work to do and slipping past him and down the ladder. Lance watches after him, staring down the center mast until Pidge reaches the ground and sulks away, brushing off whatever Hunk says to him as he disappears below deck. Lance turns finally, eyeing the strange machine and the strange headset and the strange overturned fruit crate set up like a makeshift office as far from anyone else on the ship as a person can get. 

Only then does he notice the slight shortness of his breath that comes with monologuing at the limits of a generated atmosphere, so after a second he makes for the ladder himself, starting the wobbly journey down. 

__ __

He tells Hunk about his exchange with Pidge as they're watching dishes together in the kitchen that evening. 

“I mean, it  _ sounds _ like you got through to him,” Hunk says carefully, placing a heavy brass pot upside down on a drying rack. “Sort of. I think he knows he needs to work with you. I don't really know what he gets so caught up in all the time that he's too busy to talk to you though.”

“It sounded kind of like he's worried we might be followed by someone,” Lance mentions, remembering Pidge's whole point about the map sending out signals. “You don't think the map’s… I dunno… leading us toward something bad, do you?”

Hunk shakes his head. “I wondered that at first,” he confesses, “but I think he's more worried about the bad things it'll lead to us. I mean, the map is kind of really,  _ really _ famous, y’know? A whole planet full of treasure is definitely the sort of thing that pirates would hop on as soon as they caught wind of it.”

Lance groans, scrubbing at the congealed cornmeal stuck to the serving spoon in his hands. “I didn't even think of that,” he admits. “I can't believe I thought this would be some fun expedition.”

Hunk claps him on the shoulder in solidarity. “Ew, gross!” Lance says, jerking away as he feels the cold damp of dishwater seeping into his shirt. 

“Oh, sorry,” Hunk says. 

They work together in relative quiet until Lance yawns. It’s late, technically. Out in space they don't really have a set time for a day or night, but they measure the day effectively enough between sleep and active cycles that his circadian rhythm picks up a thing or two. It's probably about the equivalent to midnight on Montressor, or maybe a little later still. Lance is about to voice some complaint or another about wanting to go to bed when there's a small beeping sound behind him, and he and Hunk turn to see Rover, one of Pidge’s strange little projects (more like pets, by the way he treats them), hovering down the stairs leading to the upper deck. 

“Hey Rover,” Hunk calls casually, going back to washing dishes once a recognizes the floating robot. 

“Hi,” Lance adds with less certainty. Rover beeps happily, the infrared scanner on its single, tiny screen brightening as it rushes over to float around Lance. 

It's taken a liking to Lance, for whatever reason. Lance doesn't actually know that much about robots, but he always assumed they just sort of did whatever they were programmed to do. In the two weeks Lance’s been aboard the ship, however, he's come to find out that the technology beyond Montresor is far more malleable and advanced than anything that ever came near his family’s inn. Rover’s actually just some throwaway droid that Pidge had modified at some point before Lance joined the crew, of unknown origin but clearly maintaining some kind of bond with its maker, and now with Lance. 

“I wish your owner was this friendly with me,” Lance mumbles as Rover bumps itself repeatedly against the side of his head. Lance yawns again and gives Rover a quizzical look, holding it back with his hand before it can give him a headache. “Shouldn't you be powered down by now? Pidge only keeps you up for day cycles,” he wonders. Pidge is very strict about conserving energy, insistent that a robot needs the technological equivalent of a good night’s rest to function properly. The couple times Lance has been caught playing with Rover after hours were both met with a grimace and a sharp scolding from Pidge, who would act like Lance was some rowdy teenager keeping a toddler up all night. Suffice to say, it's unusual for Rover to be wandering the ship this late without Pidge around to police it. 

Rover beeps unintelligibly in reply, unequipped for communication beyond yes or no questions. Lance sighs and scratches the back of his head. “I should probably get you back to Pidge before he finds us and gets the wrong idea.”

“Good idea,” Hunk speaks up from where he’s finishing off the last few plates. “If you lose any more points with that guy I don't know what Captain Allura’s gonna do to you both.”

Lance groans. “I don't know why she has to be so up my ass about it,” he says as he leads Rover to the stairs leading to the upper deck. “If she'd just sit back and let me n’ Pidge handle things, we'd probably even get along  _ better.” _

As it stands, Allura’s had a total of  _ three _ talks with him about his incompetence where teamwork is concerned. His objections about getting along with Hunk just fine fall on deaf ears every time, because apparently it doesn't count if Hunk’s not his “assigned partner”, which then devolves into some bullshit speech about how “you don't always get to pick your teammates Lance” and “if you can't learn to be civil with anyone you'll never survive in the real world.” Lance greatly suspects her insistence is Coran’s fault—probably some sideways effort by Lance’s mother to teach him a life lesson or two while he's supposed to be having a cool adventure. It's bullshit. 

His feet carry him to Pidge’s usual haunts: the crow’s nest, the hydraulic room, the mizzenmast. Lance finally finds him at the back of the ship, perched impossibly out on the cathead, his legs swung over either side and holding him there like he isn't hanging terrifyingly out over the empty abyss of space. 

“God dammit,” Lance sighs. “No way I'm going tightrope walker.  _ Hey Pidge!” _ He shouts as loud as he dares in the middle of the night cycle. Rover buzzes and beeps some unknowable pattern of messages and cheerily zooms over to Pidge’s side as he jumps at the sound of Lance’s voice. He glances quickly over his shoulder, just long enough to see who’s bothering him, then he turns back around, pretending to be busy with his glasses. 

“What is it, Lance?” he asks sharply. Lance raises an eyebrow at the bite in his voice. 

“Rover wandered into the kitchen. Geez, Pidge, if you're going to get mad at me for keeping him out past robot-bedtime, you can't get mad at me for bringing him back.”

Pidge puts his glasses back on and acknowledges Rover, patting the top point of its pyramid-form as one would pet a dog. “...Thanks,” Pidge says after a moment, pulling Rover down to power it off. He makes no move to further engage Lance. He doesn't look like he'll be moving any time soon. 

Lance huffs exasperation. “C’mon, dude, can't you just lighten up a  _ little  _ once in a while? Why're you even out here anyway? It's late.”

Pidge’s shoulder tense irritably. “I’m not a child. I can stay out as late as I want.”

Lance raises his hands in defense. “That's not what I was saying,” he explains quickly. “I'm just curious. You… are you like, stargazing?”

“Is that such a weird thing for a navigator to do?” 

“Obviously not,” Lance says. “But like, for fun? Is that something you enjoy?”

A pause. There's tension in the curve of Pidge’s back that tells Lance he’s got much more than foreign constellations on his mind; like he's got something he wants to say, but he’s not sure if he should say it. Lance is about to cut right through the awkwardness between them and ask outright when Pidge finally speaks again. 

“Tomorrow… we should look at the map again.” Lance’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Pidge still doesn't turn to face him. “It'll be faster to directly track the beacon. There's obviously a reason no normal navigator’s been able to find the planet before, and if the map’s the missing piece it'd be stupid not to use it.”

Lance has no idea where this is coming from. He's not gonna object or anything, it's just… unexpected. “Good to hear,” Lance says, sort of awkwardly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Just uh… come get me whenever, I guess. I'll probably just be, like, polishing the rails or whatever.”

For some reason, Pidge’s shoulders sink lower at that. “You don't have to do stuff like that anymore, um. I’m sorry I’ve been so, uh, uncooperative, and um, that I give you pointless jobs. I'm just busy, y’know? My work’s not really a two-man job.”

Lance’s heart swells with this sign of humanity. “Seriously? Awesome! Mopping the deck everyday is  _ so  _ boring.” The lightness in his voice seems to ease the strain in Pidge’s shoulders, and Lance somehow feels even more triumphant. “Dude, you're for sure not gonna regret this. By tomorrow you'll be like, ‘Oh Lance, I’m sorry I doubted you for so long! You really are so smart and funny, I can't believe I never saw it before now!’”

He can practically hear Pidge roll his eyes. “Alright whatever, just go away now. I can't focus on the stars with you talking so much.”

Lance concedes, throwing an obnoxious goodbye over his shoulder and running back to the bow of the ship without really thinking about where he's going. 

It’s the closest thing to a victory he’s had all month. 

__ __

He talks Hunk’s ear off about it as soon as he's properly awake, which surprisingly happens much earlier than Lance is used to. Maybe it's the prospect of actually  _ doing something  _ getting him all worked up, 

“You said he was on the cathead?” Hunk wonders, shooting him a confused look as soon as Lance is done recounting the conversation with as many embellishments as possible.

Lance nods. “Yeah, dude. All perched like a bird and everything. It was totally weird, but he was just chillin’, so like, hey, whatever works for him y’know?”

Hunk has him move out of the way so he can keep serving gourmet porridge and fruit to the rest of the grumbling morning crowd lined up behind him. “No kidding,” he says. “The cathead’s like, Pidge’s designated spot for ‘personal time.’ I’m surprised you got him to talk to you at all, much less without him yelling.”

“Well, I mean,” Lance backtracks, acknowledging he might have embellished a little  _ too  _ much. “It wasn't  _ all _ like, friendly. He yelled at me at first and like, the whole time he wouldn't look at me? He was kinda tense too I guess, but mostly he seemed chill.”

Hunk gives him a strange look, more unreadable than the first but still evidently in some way confused. “Was he crying?” he asks, in such a way that somehow manages to make him sound both incredulous and unsurprised at the same time. 

Lance raises an eyebrow. “Uhh, no? I mean, I don't  _ think  _ so. It’s kinda hard to tell in the dark, but why would he have been  _ crying?” _

Hunk shrugs. “I dunno, man, but the way you describe him definitely sounds like someone who's trying to pretend he's not crying.”

Lance tries to think about that. His memory of the night before is already clouded with the overly-enthusiastic fallacies he’s spiced it up with, but he tries,  _ really  _ tries to sift through his own delusions to get to the honest core of their exchange. He remembers getting sassy about Rover at some point, which he hasn't mentioned to Hunk, and he remembers Pidge pointedly keeping his attention fixed on the stars. “I mean,” he starts, thinking about the way Pidge cleaned his glasses against his shirt, “I guess he could've been.  _ Maybe.  _ I don't really think so though—I probably would've noticed.” 

Hunk sighs. “You would say that,” he says. 

“What's that supposed to mean?!”

“Nothing at all.”

Lance hovers around Hunk while Hunk finishes serving the line and accommodating the varying dietary needs of the multi-species crew. Lance banters with him and the other now-familiar faces until the line starts to dwindle, and Lance is long finished with his breakfast, and he's just wondering whether he should start helping with cleanup when a massive, reptilian member of the crew lumbers out of the way, revealing a very short and very tired-looking person tacked on near the end of the line. 

“Hey Pidge,” Hunk says casually, scooping grits into a steel bowl and placing it on the other’s tray. Pidge hums in acknowledgment as Hunk portions out the rest of his share. 

“ _ Dude _ ,” Lance chimes in, because if Hunk’s not going to say anything he might as well. “You look like you got sucked right out of the atmosphere. Did you even sleep last night?”

Pidge shoots him a sharp look that makes Lance think he either doesn't remember or wants to pretend he forgot their conversation last night. “Does it matter? I had work to do.” And then he just drifts off and out of the kitchen before Hunk can finish serving him space-fruit salad, off to eat wherever it is that he always goes during mealtime. 

Lance’s jaw drops as he gapes after Pidge, who disappears up the stairs back up to the main deck. “...Well what the heck is  _ his  _ problem?!”

Hunk sighs. “So much for progress,” he laments. 

Lance turns to him. “Dude, I  _ swear _ we talked! I really thought we made up!”

“Then maybe it doesn't have to do with you,” Hunk suggests, waving the ladle idly. “Maybe he's just grumpy because he didn't sleep; maybe he's got other stuff on his mind.”

“What else could be on his mind other than finding Treasure Planet?” Lance drawls. “Seriously. I'm asking. You know him better, do you have any idea why he's being such a dick?” 

Hunk frowns. “I mean, I don't know him  _ that _ well. He's only less new to the crew than you are by a few trideca-cycles. We work together, but he's kinda always been like this. Some days, it's better just to leave him be.”

Lance is just a little sick of hearing people tell him to back off, when at the same time all he gets from Allura is insistence that he do the exact opposite. It's confusing, and he's had enough. “Yeah, well I don't work by his moody little schedule,” Lance says, standing up. “We’re supposed to recalibrate the map today, and I’m not about to let him throw me back on mop-duty just because he's got a case of PMS.”

“Lance, don't bug him  _ now,” _ Hunk groans, watching him stomp out hopelessly. 

“Too late, Hunk!” Lance declares, throwing a hand up in a casual farewell. “If he wants to throw a bitch fit, I’m gonna show him how it's done.”

He marches up the stairs and out of sight. The noise in the kitchen has gotten quieter as the crew watches on. Somebody coughs. 

“... _ What _ ?” Hunk asks no one in particular. 

__ __

Lance is largely unsuccessful in tracking down Pidge after he storms out of the kitchen. He's not sure how somebody can disappear that quickly, but after a solid fifteen minutes of searching Lance decides he's out of luck. 

“So much for the mother of all bitch fits,” he mumbles to himself, folding his arms over the rail of the ship overlooking the empty, endless void of space. He’s been doing his best not to think about it, but this past month—er, trideca-cycle, rather—without the familiar climate of Montresor to comfort him has been… sort of lonely. Sure, there’s Coran, but he's more at home on the  _ Altean _ than he ever was back on terra firma, so Lance isn't quite sure if the feeling will really reach him the same. 

_ What am I even doing here? _

It's not quite a sudden thought. The worry over his own worth has been building steadily over the course of the past several cycles, but Lance doesn't really want to linger on it. He's the one with the map, after all. The crew needs him to open it. It's ridiculous to even think that he's not important to the cause—he's the reason there’s a cause at all.

But… that doesn't ease the ache he feels, like a tiny black hole that's opened up in his sternum, feeding on whatever emotion it finds and leaving him strangely empty. He misses Montresor. He misses his family. And if he gets thinking about it enough, he even starts to miss his asshole solar-surfer friends he'd hang around with on weekends. He wonders if they ever miss him too. 

“Lance!”

Lance looks up, startled from his thoughts by Allura’s frantic voice. She's a deck above him, rushing down the steps to meet him. 

“Captain,” he says, surprised. “What's going on?” 

“Where's Pidge?” she demands instead of answering his question. 

Lance frowns, remembering why he's out here in the first place. “Off pouting somewhere, last I checked. I was looking for him too.”

Allura runs a delicate hand down her face. “This is bad. Is Hunk still in the kitchen?”

“Uh, yeah, but why—?”

“Keep looking for Pidge!” Allura tells him, hurrying off in the direction of the mess hall. “When you find him, tell him we’re on course for a supernova.”

“We’re  _ what?”  _ Lance shouts, but she's already gone. 

Shit. Shit shit shit shit. Lance takes off at a run, checking all the hiding places he can think of. The crow’s is empty; so is the cathead. He's not by the mizzenmast or any of the others when Lance checks. He's about to dive into the heart of the ship to check the several maintenance rooms when he rounds a corner in one of the ships lower levels and runs straight into the man himself. 

“Oof!” Lance says as he lands on top of Pidge.

Pidge struggles to push him off. “Ugh— _ Lance— _ watch where you're go—”

“We’re heading straight for a supernova!” Lance explains, helping him to his feet without thinking. “Allura needs you on deck, now!”

_ “What?” _ Pidge pushes past him in the narrow corridor. “That's impossible! We weren't supposed to pass this close to any star for another deca-cycle at least!” Nonetheless, he hurries to the upper decks, wasting no time as Lance follows suit. 

“Hey, don't yell at me! I don't speak nerd; I'm just here to tell you what the Captain said!” Lance argues. 

Pidge throws open the door that lets them out onto the main deck. Already, it's chaos, with the crew swarming in a frantic mess, shouting orders and tying sails and nearly trampling each other in their hurry to complete their tasks. Above it all, Captain Allura stands beside Coran, doing her best to find some semblance of control over the crew as distantly, a brilliant light slowly deepens in hue. 

“There's no way,” Pidge says, frozen where he stands as he watches the star die. His glasses reflect the light of the star, which washes his face in a crimson glow that reminds Lance strangely of sunsets on Montresor. Lance watches as his expression goes through an infinite amount of changes in a single moment before finally settling on determination. He turns on his heel and marches straight back into the corridor, leaving Lance to tail behind him, confused. 

“Where are you going?” He demands. “Everyone needs you!”

“What do you think I'm doing, dumbass?” Pidge snaps shortly. “I can't do anything out there. If the gravity of that star managed to pull us far enough off course that we’re going to be caught in the crossfire of its supernova, it's big enough to collapse into a black hole.”

“A  _ black hole? _ We’re heading for a freaking  _ black hole?!” _

Pidge shoulders through the door to the stairwell and takes the metal steps two at a time, using the rail to keep his momentum as he swings around the bends at top speed. “We’re not on top of it yet. I'd say we have maybe half an hour before that star caves. After that, I can't know if we have a few cycles or a few hours before we hit it without knowing its exact size and our distance from its center.”

“If we’re already being affected by its gravity, what can we do?” Lance says. He hates standing around like this. He should at least be doing something useful, like securing the sails or the landlines or  _ something _ . Instead he's just following Pidge without any idea what to do. 

“It's not too late,” Pidge assures him. The utter confidence in his voice eases some of the tension in Lance’s chest. “As a black hole collapses, it emits immense levels of radiation in waves that a ship with our type of solar-adaptive sails can use to cancel out the gravitational influence. Frankly, I don't want to have to get that close. It's a high risk maneuver; there should be a way for us to use that same electromagnetic radiation to reverse the pull into a push with a much less dramatic, much less likely to fail method.”

“You know Standard Language would be nice too.”

Pidge sighs impatiently as he wrestles with a stubborn door. “It's like when you have two magnets but you turn it so the same poles are facing each other.”

Montresor’s standards for education didn't give him nearly enough to help him understand what Pidge is talking about, but an early memory of magnetic toy trains with his siblings supplies the missing pieces of the analogy for him, and with a sudden burst of insight he finally gets it. 

“Doesn't that seem, like, way too simple to actually be effective?” Lance wonders as Pidge finally gets the door open. 

“Sometimes the simplest answers are the most effective,” Pidge replies. 

Inside the room, it's about five degrees cooler than it is out in the hall. The back wall isn't so much of a wall as it is a mess of piping dividing this room from the one beside it. In the center of the room is a hexagonal, steel compartment with a single door just tall enough for a short person to fit through. Lance gets a fleeting thought that this is Pidge’s secret brooding lair, and that instead of actually doing anything he’s going to hop into this mini fallout shelter and escape the ship and the black hole and find the treasure himself, but this fantasy is immediately dismissed when Pidge opens the compartment to reveal a chaotic mess of cables and wires all plugged into a bronze, iridescent sphere hovering in the center of it all.

“What's this?” Lance asks, crouching beside Pidge as he examines the machinery, somehow making sense of this impossibly complex work of engineering. 

“Traditional Altean ships didn't have the same seamless system for false gravity and magnetic stability that modern ships do,” Pidge explains, pulling a pair of gloves from his pocket. “Instead they had two, totally separate systems, which is actually good for us. This means I can work on pushing us away from the black hole without running the risk of having everyone on deck just sort of float off into space.”

Lance picks up what he needs from that: Pidge is going to flip their metaphorical train-magnet-toy around and nobody will be lost to the void. “What can I do?” he asks. 

Pidge looks back at him with an eyebrow raised. “What?”

“What can I do to help? If our lives are at stake I don't want to just sit here and be useless!”

Pidge looks back at the machine, thinking. “Tell Allura what I’m gonna do,” he decides. “She's gonna want to know what's happening. If you can, see if Hunk wants to come help. He knows more about engineering than I do. Oh,” he adds as Lance moves to leave. He pauses halfway out the door. “And get me as much information as you can on the situation: our distance, the size of the supernova, anything.”

Lance nods determinedly. “You got it, Pidge,” he says, and then he's off, down the hall and up the stairs, feeling strangely more at ease now that he’s got a job to do and he understands the plan. 

“I hope you're right about all this Pidge,” he mutters to himself as he comes out onto the main deck. He spots Allura again and makes his way towards her. “Otherwise you're  _ really _ gonna see a bitch fit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> next time: things don't turn out quite like the movie, but hey. what better for character bonding than extended, tense situations?


	3. Some Days, Your Hands Are Busy on the Wrong Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mmmmmBack maties. so how about season 7 huh? it really watered my plance. I'm literally drowning. what a good shower we've been given in the Garden this season. anyways, I hope y'all enjoy! this chapter was super fun to write with all the world building I got to take liberties with. good times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alt title: science that i made up

It comes down to a waiting game, and the entire ship seems to be holding its breath.

Lance explains, as best he can, what Pidge is planning to do to Allura, who sends Hunk back with him to help Pidge. The three of them end up together in that cramped little room, Lance supplying moral support while Pidge and Hunk argue over the exact extent that they need to rotate the sphere in order to counter the electromagnetic force of the black hole just right. Lance really has no idea what any of it means, so he waits in the corner, trying not to get too annoyed when the other two can’t come to an agreement.

“We have to rotate it 122 degrees along the Z axis, or the weight of the masts will overbalance the hull and destabilize the whole ship!”

_ “No, _ we have to rotate it 94 degrees along the Z and 42 on the X, to account for the impact that the added forces the bodies of the crew have.”

“That’s a  _ really _ big shift; there’s no  _ way  _ that’s right.”

“I’m accounting for drag on the sails once they’re open.”

“There’s no drag in space, Pidge.”

“There  _ will be  _ when the  _ black hole collapses.” _

They squable on like that for minutes that feel like hours to Lance, who has nothing better to do than stress about their current life-or-death situation. Finally, they agree that switching a few cables around while allowing for a 102 degree shift in the Z axis is a reasonable compromise, and they sit back to consider their work.

“Is it done?” Lance asks, sitting up once he notices that Pidge and Hunk have stopped arguing. 

“About as done as it can be, for now,” Pidge says, rubbing his eyes from underneath his glasses. “We’ll have to keep adjusting it as we make our way around the supernova, but this should keep us on course for now.”

Lance looks up at the ceiling, then down at his hands. “Doesn’t feel like we’ve changed at all,” he says.

“That’s because false gravity is still in effect. Relative to us, the forces haven’t changed, but if we’re right about this, then we should already be pushing against the magnetic force of the black hole.”

Lance almost doesn’t open his mouth to ask, because he doesn’t really want to stress himself out any more than he already is, but the uncertainty only makes him more uneasy, so he says, “And if we’re not? Right about this, I mean.”

A shadow crosses Pidge’s face, and he turns his attention to the porthole located in the back of the room. Through the small window, Lance can make out the distant light of the collapsing star. “Then we’ll have to ride the radiation out of range, or we don’t make it out of here.”

Lance swallows impulsively. Hunk’s expression is similarly grim. In the few weeks they’ve spent together on this voyage, Lance has come to learn a lot about Hunk’s weak stomach for high-stress situations, so it doesn’t surprise him when Hunk gets to his feet and explains that he needs to do something with his hands. Lance can’t really blame him; sitting around like this, just waiting, is excruciating.

“Give me a call if you need me,” he tells Pidge. “I’m gonna see if Allura needs help with anything above deck.”

Pidge gives him a half wave before settling himself down in front of the compartment. The room goes quiet, save for the whirring of machines and the distant sounds of the crew buckling down. Now that it's just the two of them stuck in this small space, Lance feels awkward, like maybe he should've followed Hunk to see if there’s something that needs his attention. 

Probably not. Allura would probably want him to keep on as Pidge’s servant boy anyways. Whatever; he might be kind of a dick, but at least Pidge knows what's going on. It calms his nerves, seeing someone who has control over the situation. The way Pidge’s fingers roll across the keys controlling the output of information from the sphere is hypnotic, even if Lance can't read the dialect it’s printed with. (He'd guess it's Altean, if this ship really is the historic vessel the others boast it is.) Even so, the porthole at the back of the room reminds him that something could go wrong at any second, and so with nothing else to distract him from the increasing discomfort of sitting in silence with someone he doesn't know too well, Lance decides to take a shot at conversation.

“You're not as nervous as I thought you'd be,” he tries, going for casual even as he addresses the chaos looming outside. “Aren't you like, freaking out?”

Pidge doesn't look up from the keyboard, continuing to type as he replies. “It's a tense situation, but there are still things we can do to get out of it. There's no reason to be nervous if we're not on top of it yet.”

Clinical. Mathematic. Somehow, Pidge’s short response isn't as annoying as usual. He decides to keep talking, for the sake of filling the space. “It's just—it’s way different out here than I expected. The stars always look so close together from Montressor, but then you actually get here and they're just…  _ worlds _ apart.”

Pidge adjusts the sphere slightly, watching a small monitor set into the inside of the compartment’s door for changes. “Well, yeah. Stars are massive. If they looked far apart it’d probably mean your planet is stranded in deep space far out of the access range of Interplanetary Networks like ours, in which case you wouldn't know much about anything in the first place.” A moment passes, and he adds, “Anything about like, stars and Planet Networks, I mean.”

Lance understood him the first time, but hearing him correct himself gives him pause.  _ Is he… trying not to offend me?  _ “Oh,” is all he says in response, and they fall silent again after that. 

Lance doesn't pretend to think he's some science wiz like Pidge or Hunk, and he knows that at least Hunk is aware that that's something he's not too proud of. After weeks of envisioning Pidge as this closed-off social shut-out, it's weird to imagine that he might have some knowledge of social graces after all. 

* * *

“What planet are you from?” Lance blurts after too much time passes without anything happening. Pidge has taken to leaning up against the side of the compartment and checking on the sphere every five minutes, making minor adjustments where he needs. Outside, the supernova is expanding slowly, far enough away that Lance can make out the farthest-reaching tendrils of fire and energy radiating from the dying star.

Pidge looks up, looking vaguely startled, like he'd forgotten Lance was even there in the first place. (Not surprising, but also, rude.) His expression quickly shifts to one of cautious suspicion. 

“Why do you want to know?” he asks, side eyeing the sphere like it might offer some escape from the question. Damn, the kid acts like he's being interrogated. Lance shrugs. 

“I mean, it's not that weird of a question,” he defends. “We’ve got time to kill, and my butt fell asleep, so a distraction would be nice.” He shifts, trying to find a more comfortable positions and eventually just deciding to lay down. “It's not a crime to be curious. I’m from—”

“—Montressor, I know,” Pidge interrupts, but not impatiently. More like he's mulling something over, and for some reason that fact has some influence over whether he'll answer. “Backwater planet in the Delta-18 Sector.”

“Actually, we call it the Lenos System, but that works too.”

“You're Delta-18 by the Network’s charts,” Pidge says. “Montressor’s just a rest stop for interstellar transport. I guess it makes sense that whoever gave you that map made an emergency landing on your rock.”

Lance huffs. “‘Rock?’ Montressor might not be as fancy or updated as wherever you're from, but she's not an asteroid! Have a little respect!”

Pidge spares him a sarcastic glance. “Right, sorry. Forgot planets like you get defensive about stuff like that.”

Lance folds his arms behind his head and snorts in defiance. It's not until a minute later that he remembers what got them into the argument in the first place. “Hey, you distracted me! You know where I'm from—now it's your turn to spill!” Pidge hesitates, so Lance adds, sarcastically, “I'm not gonna track you down and stalk you or anything, geez.”

Pidge scoffs. “As if I’m worried about you miraculously being able to find your way to my sector, seeing as your such a stellar pilot in the first place.” Lance bites his tongue, decides not to grace that with a response. He waits. Eventually, Pidge concedes with a sigh. “I’m from Sigma-42, Auriga System. It’s–there are plenty of inhabited planets out there.”

Lance thinks back to what he learned in elementary school, counting down the alphabet from delta to sigma. “Sigma–that’s so far away! How’d you get all the way out here?”

Pidge picks at the fabric of his shorts, suddenly uncomfortable. “There are plenty of wormholes scattered around Sigma–that’s why it’s such a hub of activity. It’s basically a connecting system that leads to almost any other system in the Terran Network, if you know where to look. I–er, the  _ Altean _ came through a few times so. Y’know. I’m here.”

He’s stopping himself from oversharing. Lance sits up, deciding that if they’re getting serious he might as well look attentive. “Why’d you come here, anyway? Does your planet just like, not have rules about kids going off into space?”

Pidge shoots him an annoyed look. “I’m fifteen, almost sixteen. By my planet’s standards, that nearly makes me an adult.”

Lance holds up his hands defensively. “Alright, okay, sorry. Age is but a number, got it.” He waits, but Pidge seems content to let the topic drop there. Maybe it makes him nosy (he likes to think of it more as having a healthy curiosity about those around him), but Lance isn't ready to let go of the conversation just yet. 

“So, what, you just decided to hop on board one day? I know you've only been here a few tri-deca cycles longer than me.”

Pidge shoots him an irritated look as he turns around again to readjust the electromagnetic sphere. “Maybe I did, Lance. I really don't see why it matters so much to you.”

Lance frowns. “Hey man, I'm sorry for wanting to get to know you. You don't have to be a dick about everything. I'm not out to get you, dude.”

Pidge sits back on his heels and pinches the bridge of his nose under the rim of his glasses, steadying himself with a hand against the door to the compartment. When he lowers his hand and goes back to typing on the keypad, his expression is more tired than aggressive. “Look, I know… you're not like that. I just… would  _ really _ appreciate it if we could save the twenty questions for after the life or death situations.”

Lance relaxes slightly at that. “Yeah, okay man. But I'm holding you to that, just so you know,” he adds with a grin. Pidge huffs a sound between a groan and a laugh. Lance feels a little bad for trying to force an apparently difficult conversation while Pidge is working so hard to save their asses. He sits back against the wall and resolves to be the least bothersome as possible while Pidge does his thing.

* * *

Hunk comes back in maybe fifteen minutes later, looking uneasy but thankfully not panicked. “We can see the black hole by now,” he announces. A glance out the porthole confirms this. Lance can’t help but think it looks as if someone has poked a hole in the otherwise undisturbed wall of stars. “I’d say there’s a ten minute delay between what we’re seeing and what’s going on in real time.”

“It only takes ten minutes for the light to reach us?” Pidge says, frowning. “I didn’t think we were  _ that  _ close.”

Hunk comes down to crouch beside him in front of the sphere, while Lance wonders in what galaxy that ten light minutes is ‘close’ (because he, like everyone else on Montressor, has at least memorized basic conversions like “one light minute equals about eighteen million kilometers” and the like). He comes to the conclusion that space is weird, and that he’s just going to have to leave the science to the experts.

“Your plan seems to be working, though,” Hunk reports. “We’ve gotten closer, but mostly we’ve been keeping to the outer edge of the gravitational field. We’ve got, like, a seventy-four percent chance of pulling this off.”

Seventy-four sounds good enough to Lance–maybe it’s the optimist in him–but Pidge’s expression darkens at the information. “That’s not enough,” he says. “We can’t have that wide of a margin for error. The closer we drift to the center, wider that margin’s going to get.” He goes quiet for a moment, looking pensive. “Tell Allura to– _ ugh!” _

The ship shudders suddenly, cutting Pidge off and throwing the three of them off balance. Pidge and Hunk manage to stay upright by holding onto the pipes lining the walls, but Lance, who was thankfully on the floor to begin with, slides sideways to the back of the room under the porthole with a resounding  _ “Oof!” _

“What was that?” he shouts in alarm, holding tight to the wall even though the rumbling has stopped.

“That would be the radiation,” Pidge says through gritted teeth. He glances out the porthole, then back at Hunk. “You stay here and keep the sphere calibrated,” he orders. Hunk doesn’t question it; there’s a look in Pidge’s eyes that makes Lance feel suddenly hopeful, like he’s got a plan and everything’s going to work out. Pidge is already halfway to the door when he says, “Lance, come with me.” Lance scrambles to his feet in compliance and follows on unsteady feet.

“Where are we going?” Lance asks, stumbling as another wave of radiation rocks the ship. Alarms blare down the hallways, and Lance wonders for the first time if a ship as old as the  _ Altean _ is appropriately outfitted to handle this kind of throttling. 

“To get Allura to lower the sails,” Pidge answers, keeping one hand braced against the wall as he leads the way through the maze of passageways. “After that, I’ll need to rewire the energy converters to interpret  _ solely _ electromagnetic radiation. If Allura keeps us on course, and Hunk keeps our magnetic field reversed, we should be able to ride the waves of radiation out of range.”

Lance’s eyes widen. “Isn’t this the ‘worst case scenario’ you mentioned earlier?”

Pidge offers a humorless laugh in response. “No, in that one we use a massive wave to eject ourselves from the hole right before it kills us. This scenario is more like, ‘worst best case’.” They round a corner and find the stairwell leading up to the upper deck, and Pidge takes the steps two at a time.

“At least we’ve got  _ that _ going for us,” Lance grumbles as he follows. 

They make it to the main deck right as another wave of radiation sends the ship careening sideways. Pidge, with all of his forward momentum, trips and nearly falls right on his face, but is saved just in time by the appearance of Rover the robot, who pushes him upright. “Thanks bud,” Pidge says, sparing a moment to pat it on the point of its pyramidal body before running over to Allura.

He spends a minute explaining his plan to Allura, which Lance doesn’t really understand most of. He does his best to keep up though, and after Pidge finishes he asks what he can do to help.

“Secure the landlines,” Allura suggests before Pidge can answer. “It’s going to be a rough ride from here on out–make sure you two each wear one as well.”

Pidge leaves for the mizzenmast while Lance goes for the fore, where the closest landlines are rooted. Allura calls directions to the crew to lower the sails behind him. As he secures a landline around his own waste, Lance looks out into the distance at the black hole and the distortion bending around its outer event horizon. He swallows and tries not to remember the time he’d watched a trash compactor swallow the remains of a broken droid. 

He ties his tightest knots as he goes around the circumference of the foremast, then moves on to the main mast. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Rover hovering around Pidge as he works away at the same compartment he’d been tinkering with when Lance first met him. Lance checks over the main mast’s knots as quickly as he can before making his way to the mizzen. There are a few extra landlines here, but he secures them anyway, rationalizing that if they need extras they might as well be ready for use. 

When he’s certain everything’s rooted well enough, he turns to Pidge, and only then notices that the other’s landline is looped loosely around his forearm.

“Pidge!” Lance accuses. “You need to wear your landline!”

“No time Lance,” he argues, not looking up from where his nimble fingers are linking and unlinking wires in an effort to redirect the flow of energy. “I have to fix the channels before we get any closer.”

Lance groans in exasperation. The ship lurches again, throwing them both off balance. Lance crouches to avoid being thrown around too much more and crawls over to where Pidge is regaining his posture.

“Here,” he demands. “Give it to me, then.” Before Pidge can protest, Lance reaches over to unloop the rope from Pidge’s grip and sets to work wrapping it around his waist. Pidge goes tense, but Lance doesn’t have time to worry about overstepping boundaries. He double knots the landline snug around Pidge’s middle as the other continues to work.

_ Damn he’s thin, _ Lance thinks distantly, mildly surprised. When all of this is over, he’ll have to give Pidge one of his mom’s famous speeches about growing men needing nutrients. 

“There,” Pidge says, connecting a final wire and slamming the door to the mizzenmast shut. “Everyone hold onto something!” he shouts over the sound of the sails powering up. When the next wave of radiation hits, the ship shudders and the sails expand, and the ship is carried by the pulse of energy away from the singularity of the black hole. Crew members who haven’t managed to hold onto anything fall, but their landlines hold true, and they cheer at the obvious turnaround. Lance can’t suppress a grin. 

“It’s working!” he cheers. Another wave, and they’re pushed further away. He turns his gaze onto Pidge, who’s got one hand gripping the base of his landline and another tucking Rover up to his chest. “You did it!”

For the first time throughout this entire ordeal, his face softens into something like relief, and he offers Lance half a smile back. “It’s working,” he sighs. “Thank Polaris.”

* * *

An hour later, they’ve made it well out of the way of the black hole’s influence. Hunk and Pidge have reset the electromagnetic-sphere-thing to its normal state, and the sails have gone back to converting solar energy rather than radiation. After a final headcount, Captain Allura confirms that no one was lost during the chaos. She privately thanks Lance for securing the landlines, and then comments on his improving teamwork with Pidge. It’s the first conversation they’ve had in a while where she isn’t scolding him about it, so he takes the compliment and assures her they’ve been working on it.

Which reminds him–he’s got a conversation to finish.

During dinner, Lance leaves Hunk in the kitchen to stake out wherever Pidge has disappeared to. He finds him up in the crow’s, interpreting his star charts and listening to whatever it is that comes through those headphones of his all the way up here. Lance climbs up, balancing his tray of food on one hand as he goes and doing his best not to scare Pidge this time when he makes it to the landing. Thankfully, Pidge notices him as soon as his head appears through the hole in the floor, and he types a few things out on his monitor before pulling down his headphones around his neck.

“Need something?” he asks as Lance finds a space that isn’t crowded with strange machines to sit down. 

“You weren’t at dinner,” Lance points out. The look on Pidge’s face makes it apparent that he doesn’t find that to be an adequate reason, so Lance rolls his eyes and uses his most put-upon tone to walk Pidge through the basics of decent social interactions. “I figured you’d be off somewhere doing your own thing. By the way, you shouldn’t skip meals. It’s no wonder you’re such a short twig.”

“I ate earlier,” Pidge dismisses. He leans back on his hands though, not going right back to his work like Lance anticipates. He takes this as an invitation to keep talking.

“Well, it’s not the middle of a life-or-death situation anymore.  _ You _ promised to tell me why you left your planet later. It’s later.”

Something in Pidge’s expression steels over at the reminder, and he looks down. Lance can see him beginning to curl into himself (so to speak), and he opens his mouth to persevere, but Pidge cuts him off. “I did say that,” he concedes with a sigh, dropping his shoulders and making what’s clearly a concerted effort to appear relaxed. 

“My planet’s called Balto,” he starts, not looking directly at Lance. “It’s very technologically advanced, and we’ve got some of the best universities in the entire Sigma subdivision. I  _ do _ love it there,” he insists. A pause. “Listen, Lance… there are some things that are hard to talk about. I appreciate that you want to know stuff about me, but… I don’t really feel comfortable–”

“Dude,” Lance interjects, raising a hand in a sympathetic gesture. Pidge looks up at him for the first time; his eyes are dry but red-rimmed, and Lance suddenly thinks back to the night before when he’d found Pidge on the cathead. Maybe… Hunk had been right after all. “I didn’t mean to force you to tell me a bunch of emotional stuff. If it’s really a big deal, you don’t have to talk about it. I wanna get along with you, not make you tell me all your personal shit. Even though, obviously, if you ever, uh, need someone to talk to, I’m like–I’m here for you? I mean it’s not personal  _ shit _ obviously, I just meant stuff that’s important to you or heavy or whatever–!”

“Lance.” It’s Pidge that cuts him off this time. Lance hears his own jaw click shut–thank the stars he’d shut him up. Way to put his foot in his mouth at the worst time possible. Pidge is smiling though–not sneering or mocking, but like, a  _ fuller version _ of the half-smile he’d offered earlier in the cramped room with the technology that Lance couldn’t even hope to understand. It sends a positive feeling through his chest–the first he’s ever had when talking to Pidge. “I got it, you don’t have to over-explain.” His tone isn’t condescending–more appreciative, if Lance had to pick an adjective. “I… thanks, I guess. I appreciate… all that. I’m gonna get back to work now, if you don’t, uh, need anything else.”

“Yeah, sure, I mean–go ahead,” he says loudly, glancing down at his food.  _ Oh yeah. _ “I mean–I kinda dragged all my shit up here. Is it alright if I like, eat it? So I don’t have to worry about it spilling on the way down?”

Pidge’s smile quirks on a line of amusement. “Be my guest,” he says. “Eat fast, though. You don’t want Hunk wondering where you’ve disappeared to.”

“I imagine you’re speaking from experience?”

“Let’s just say it took him a while to figure out that I like my space.”

Lance scoffs, sitting back and pulling his tray of food into his lap. “I find that hard to believe. You’re pretty obvious about that.”

“Considering that you haven’t exactly taken the hint suggests I haven’t been obvious enough.”

Lance waves his spork in dismissal. “Nah,” he says, speaking around a bite of potato. “I got it. I just don’t have enough respect for the wishes of people who call me a newbie.”

Pidge adjusts the satellite on his machine and snorts. “Get over it. You totally are. Even I knew more about sailing than you did when you first showed up.”

Lance frowns indignantly. “Yeah, well, again. Not my usual job description. I keep ships docked at the inn. Can’t blame a fish for not climbing a tree, or however that expression goes.”

Pidge busies himself with the keypad on his machine. “The one you help your mom run, huh?” he says distractedly.

Lance raises an eyebrow. “You remembered that?”

“Of course,” Pidge boasts, adjusting his glasses pretentiously. “I’m the communications liaison, remember? It’s my job to remember what people say.”

Lance laughs. “Well, at least you’ve got that part of the job down. You could work on not being an ass, though.”

“So I’ve been told.”

They lapse into silence after that, during which time Lance finishes his food. He’s not really sure he wants to go back down yet–this is the best he’s gotten along with Pidge since they met–but then he hears Hunk calling for him, and he remembers what Pidge had said about not wanting Hunk wondering where he’d gone.

“Guess that’s my cue,” he says, getting to his feet. “We’ll open the map tomorrow, yeah?” he asks, making his way over to the ladder. 

“Sure,” Pidge hums, though his attention is almost completely narrowed in on the screen in front of him. Lance wonders fleetingly what he makes out of the lines and lines of code, then shakes his head against the futile thought. 

“Cool,” Lance says. Before he fully disappears down the ladder, he throws a “Later,” up for good measure, and is pleased to hear Pidge mumble a distant “Bye” in response.

Maybe he’ll be able to shape this journey into something enjoyable after all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> next time: pidge is hiding something, and lance wants to know what.


End file.
